Without Hitting a Church Window
by Mousme
Summary: Sam and Dean travel further north than they've ever gone before –all the way to Canada– in the search to find an artifact that might help them save Cas. Once they're there they find that even though everything is different, nothing has really changed.


Title: **Without Breaking a Church Window**

Summary: Sam and Dean travel further north than they've ever gone before –all the way to Canada– in the search to find an artefact that might help them save Cas. Once they're there they find that even though everything is different, nothing has really changed, either. Written for the prompt: _write a casefic set in your own town._

Characters: Sam/Dean, OCs

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 3,165

Disclaimer: Il n'y a rien qui m'appartient, malheureusement.

Warnings: Spoilers up to and including 7.01

Neurotic Author's Note #1: I blame work for this being kind of too late even for the prompt amnesty at silverbullets. Whoops.

Neurotic Author's Note #2: So I wrote this ficlet set in Montreal, because that's where I live. Mostly I wrote it to have an excuse to write French-Canadian dialogue. For my French readers, bear in mind that it's a dialect, so it won't resemble the French you're used to.

Neurotic Author's Note #3: Yeah, so, it's not really a casefic. It's more like an interlude during a case, if you will, and it's all Sam and Dean and Sam/Dean and all the complicated ties between them and so on and so forth. I have no idea what this is meant to be. It's unbeta'd and it took an odd turn somewhere outside of Albuquerque. *hands*

Neurotic Author's Note #4: The title is taken from a quote by Mark Twain. I do love the man for his snark.

"_C'est-tu ton chum?_"

Dean swivels so fast that Sam almost loses him on the crowded sidewalk. The question –it sounds like a question, anyway– came from a nice-looking guy wearing a blue polo over faded blue jeans and Birkenstocks, of all things. Sam didn't think they even had Birkenstocks in Canada, not that he really ever gave it much thought.

"Sorry, what?"

The guy shrugs. "_J'parle pas l'anglais, désolé._"

Dean looks affronted. "Doesn't anyone in this city speak English?" he asks of no one in particular.

Sam flexes the fingers of the hand that was resting at the small of his brother's back, focuses on the feeling of concrete under the soles of his shoes. He's not floating away, he's fine. "It's a French city, Dean." He looks up at the guy, tries to scrape together the remnants of his high school French, and tells himself that there are no flames in his peripheral vision. "Um, _bonjour_. _Je m'appelle Sam._"

The guy grins. "_Américains_?"

Sam nods. "_Oui. Américains_."

"_Plaisir. Moi, c'est Bernard_," the guy puts out his hand, and Sam blinks and forces himself to reach out and shake it. If he doesn't look, he can't see the flesh on the guy's bones rotting, sloughing off beneath his touch.

"I thought all the French people were assimilated," Dean grumbles.

"Dean, shut up and be polite," Sam says tightly.

They're tourists in the city, decided the play the role to the hilt after their first abysmal attempts to blend in. Nothing about Montreal is like what they're used to. The city is confusing, from its bilingual signs to its winding streets that don't follow any grid pattern that Sam has been able to determine. Some of the streets are laid out like American ones, but in other places they all revert to one-ways and dead-ends, and sometimes a one-way street will switch directions at an intersection, forcing them to find alternate routes. Finally Dean gave up in disgust and found an all-day parking lot, grumbled under his breath about the cost ("I thought the Canadian dollar was meant to be cheaper than ours?" "Not with the economy the way it is, Dean. Don't you read the papers?" "Not the business section, it's boring."), which left them to navigate the city on foot. It's only marginally less confusing, and Montreal in August is swelteringly hot and humid, and they're both sweaty and fed up with trying to figure out just where they're trying to go.

"_En tout cas, y'est beau, ton chum_," Bernard tells Sam.

"What's he saying?" Dean demands, but Sam just shrugs.

"No idea. He's got an accent, and all I got out of that was 'pretty,' I think. Or beautiful, maybe?"

"He's saying your boyfriend is good-looking."

It's Sam's turn to spin around, only to find himself staring down at a girl a few years younger than him and about a foot and a half shorter, with short curly hair dyed a vivid fuchsia. She barely comes up to his breastbone, but she looks amused rather than intimidated, her grin revealing very even, pearly white teeth. Her eyes are a flash of blue behind trendy-looking red-rimmed half-glasses, and she's wearing an outfit that looks like it took a fair bit of time to put together so that it would look fashionably casual. She shifts her messenger bag so that it's resting on her hip, just as Dean opens his mouth to protest.

"No, we're not–" he starts, but she cuts him off.

"Hey, no need to worry here," she says, and Sam thinks he detects a trace of an accent. "This is Divercités, right? People are cool. _C'est pas vrai_?" she turns to the guy, Bernard, who's been waiting patiently for them to remember he's there. "_Y'a personne qui va les achaler icitte._"

Bernard shakes his head, his expression turning sad. _"Non, les gens sont cool ici. Pas besoin de vous inquiéter. C'est pas comme aux États."_

"See? It's not like the US, here. We don't discriminate. Well, not in Montreal, anyway."

Dean is turning a really odd shade of pink, and Sam has to bite his lip to keep from laughing at him, but it's a good feeling. "You're right," Sam tells Bernard. "He is good-looking."

The girl steps in to translate, and Bernard laughs, gives Sam a wink and Dean an appreciative once-over. "_C'est too bad_," he says, and Sam grins, because that part, he understood. "_C'est toujours les meilleurs qui sont déjà en couple. Ou bien y sont hétéros_."

"_C'est la vie_," the girl laughs, and the guy shrugs, gives them a little wave, and saunters off with a slightly suggestive sway to his hips.

"Okay, that, I understood," Dean loses the slightly irritated look and flashes the girl his patented Dean Winchester thousand-watt smile of seduction. "French always sounds better when it's on a woman's lips."

The look she gives back, though, is more amused than anything else. She glances at Sam. "Is he always like this?"

"Pretty much. Sometimes he's heavy-handed and obvious about it."

Dean smacks his arm, and Sam has to fight back a shudder at the contact. "Shut up."

Sam shoves his hand in his jacket pocket to keep himself from reaching out and grabbing Dean by the arm. He's trying not to be clingy, because Dean doesn't need his little brother hanging off him all the time. It's been months since the Wall came down, and he's mostly got a handle on the hallucinations. Dean's given him more than his fair share of free passes when it comes to that, the number of times Sam has used him as his anchor to reality. Sam figures it would be pretty shitty of him to keep doing that, since Dean is letting him stick around in spite of the fact that he tried to lie about the hallucinations to start with. The way he sees it, he's just lucky Dean is willing to have him at all.

The girl smirks, oblivious to Sam's moment of internal waffling. "Denial isn't a good look for you. So if you're not here for Pride, why are you here?"

"Pride?" Dean echoes.

Sam rolls his eyes, shifts his weight from one foot to the next, gives himself a mental order to keep it together. "Jesus, Dean, did you miss the parade full of gay people? It was pretty obvious from where I'm standing."

Dean shrugs. "Whatever, there are always parades and shit happening. I just thought it was cool that they let all those transgender chicks go topless," he turns to Sam with a suggestive grin. Sam lets his face drop into the palm of his free hand.

"I can't take you anywhere."

"So you're Dean?" the girl prompts.

"Got it in one, sweetheart," Dean reaches out to shake her hand. "The wet blanket here is Sam. What's your name?"

"Geneviève. It's a pleasure. You never answered my question."

"Uh, we're sort of here on business," Sam hedges.

"'Course, that doesn't mean we can't mix that with a little pleasure," Dean breaks in. "We're looking around, seeing the sights. Sam, here, he's a big fan of churches."

Geneviève gives Sam an incredulous look, and he does his best to look as though Dean hasn't just invented an outright lie on the spot. "Uh, from an architectural perspective. I… we were looking for St. Joseph's?" he turns it into a question, and her stance becomes more relaxed.

"Oh, the Oratory? Yeah. It's a big tourist thing here. You going to go up all the stairs on your knees?" she asks, but it's obvious she thinks it's a joke.

"What?" Sam blurts before he can help himself.

"You go up the wood stairs on your knees, and sometimes God answers your prayers."

Dean snorts. "Not frigging likely."

"That's the idea, anyway. There's ninety-nine stairs, and lots of people do it. Like a pilgrimage." The girl keeps talking to Sam, as though she doesn't quite know what to say in the face of Dean's little outburst. "It's mostly the tourists," she adds, and Sam has to look away for a moment when flames erupt from behind her.

"You know how to get there from here?" Dean asks, and Sam catches him looking over at him, expression suddenly anxious, which only serves to make Sam feel a thousand times worse.

If Geneviève notices the sudden shift in mood, she's too polite to mention it. "Sure. You go two blocks West," she points along the street on which they're standing, "and turn right when you get to Guy street. You can take the bus or the metro, or you can walk, but it's uphill half the way and it won't be fun in this weather. The bus will take you almost direct, but the metro is cooler."

Sam swallows hard. It's not that he has anything against subways, but enclosed spaces haven't exactly felt… safe, lately. Dean spares him the humiliation, though. "Yeah, tin cans that move on their own aren't exactly my speed. You said there was a bus?"

"The 165. You'll need tickets, or $2.75, exact change only. You got a tooney?"

"Okay, seriously, you will never get me to believe that this money isn't fake," Dean complains, fishing in his pockets for change. "And your paper stuff is all different colours."

"Easier to tell apart, smartass," Geneviève leans forward to swat Dean lightly on the arm. "Don't rag on Canada, we have free healthcare, which makes us automatically better than you."

Sam chokes back a snort of laughter at that, and Dean rolls his eyes. "Laugh it up, you two. Free health care would be pretty awesome though, wouldn't it, Sammy?"

Sam shrugs. "I wouldn't know."

"Okay, so, we take the 165 bus and then what?"

"Get off at Queen Mary road. If you ask the driver he'll tell you where the stop is."

"Will he speak English?" Dean sounds a little desperate.

"Probably not well, but Queen Mary is Queen Mary in both official languages. You know, I'm not doing anything, I could always come with you."

Sam stiffens a little. There's no good way to explain to this girl that they're just going to check out the place now so they can figure out how to break in later and steal one of the relics from the tomb of the Saint inside. It's a long shot, but it's the only lead they've got that might help Cas. Still, having a civilian with them, no matter if she's attractive and bilingual, is definitely going to cramp their style. Not to mention that Sam's beginning to think he's maybe not exactly in the right frame of mind to keep up this level of small talk for the rest of the afternoon. A ten-minute conversation is one thing, but several hours… he can already feel sweat trickling down his spine that has nothing to do with the heat of the August sun and everything to do with the strain of keeping his attention focused on the girl, to ignore the flashes of blood and metal and fire that keep encroaching on his peripheral vision.

"That's real nice of you," Dean flashes Geneviève another smile, "but Sam and me, we're kind of a solo act. Well, the two of us, I mean."

"I get it. Three's a crowd. You know, there's a really nice restaurant on Côte-des-Neiges, if you like French food. It's small and intimate and they have a great wine cellar." She opens her messenger bag, rummages in it and produces a ballpoint pen which she uses to scribble a name and an intersection on the back of a receipt that says 'Pharmaprix.' When she hands it to Sam, he notes a bunch of purchases that suggests the receipt is from a drugstore. Their fingers brush for a split-second, and it feels like a jolt of electricity running through his arm. Sam wonders how she doesn't feel it.

"Um, thanks," he pockets the receipt, ignoring Dean's slightly disbelieving look. It's not like they're in the habit of eating at fancy French restaurants recommended by random hipster-looking girls. "We should, um." He glances down the street, clamps down on his tongue, trying to ground himself in the pain. The ground is trying to open up under his feet, his stomach bottoming out, so he looks up, squinting against the too-bright sun.

"Thanks for your help," Dean is saying, his voice sounding faraway over the sudden sound of rushing blood in Sam's ears. He reaches out to grab Sam's elbow, fingers digging into the soft flesh just under the bone. "It was nice meeting you, Geneviève."

She smiles and bounces a little on her toes. "Nice meeting you too!" she says, and with a small wave she turns and heads back down the street.

"You okay?" Dean asks, and Sam manages a nod, but it's a lie and they both know it. Dean grips his elbow a little tighter, and Sam lets himself be steered a little blindly until his back connects with the cold stone of a nearby wall. Dean cups the back of Sam's head with his free hand. "Hey, Sammy, come on. Breathe, okay? Nice and easy, deep breaths. You're fine, okay? Nothing bad's happening."

Sam manages another tight nod, tries to do as he's told. It's stupid, falling apart at the drop of a hat like this. There's nothing wrong. The sun is shining, hundreds of people are out enjoying the summer before it's over.

"Hey," Dean's voice turns gentle. "I got you, okay? Nothing bad is going to happen, not right now." He moves in closer frames Sam's legs with his own, physically interposing himself between Sam and the rest of the world, and it's all Sam can do not to bury himself in his brother's arms.

"Dean…" he chokes, tries again. "I can't –you need to stop."

Dean just leans in closer. "It's okay," he repeats. He's so close that Sam can smell the mint from the gum he was chewing earlier.

"No, it's –shit," Sam presses both palms to the wall, letting the cold seep in through his skin, squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn't have to see his brother's expression. He's pretty sure that he remembers the basic mechanics of breathing, that he'd be able to do it if only Dean wasn't _right there_, making him forget everything else. "You can't do that. Not if you want me to hold it together."

"It's fine, take all the time you want." Dean's voice is infuriatingly reasonable, and it's not fair, none of it is, and just for once Sam wants to not be the reason that everything's going to shit, and then he realizes he must have said something, because Dean's squeezing the back of his neck and whispering to him. "Hey, hey, none of that. None of this is on you, you hear me? You saved the world, you're entitled to your bad days."

"No, I –damn it– I don't –Dean…" he's tripping over his own tongue, can feel himself falling in spite of his best efforts.

It's not fair that, even after all this time, Dean can still do this to him. Not fair that he still needs his brother this much when Dean has obviously outgrown this stupid unhealthy co-dependent thing they've always had. It's not fair that Sam is still hung up and all tied up in knots and can't bring himself to do the right thing and just let go, already. And now here they are in a city that's not even in their own country under the bright, unforgiving summer sun, and Hell itself is nipping at his heels, and he just wants it to _stop_.

Dean kisses him.

For a second Sam is too shocked to do anything except stand stock-still, eyes wide, and just let his brother crowd him against the wall, tongue pushing through what few defences he has left. Sam lets out a breathy whimper before he can help himself, his eyes slipping shut, God help him, because he wants this, has wanted this for as long as he can remember. Dean hasn't so much as looked at him that way in months, not since long before the Wall came down, and Sam figured it was just another way in which he was meant to lose his brother. Because that's how Sam's world works: life dangles his brother –happiness– in front of him, lets him reach out and brush it with his fingertips, and then snatches it all away again. Over and over. A lifetime of Tuesdays.

Sam kisses Dean back.

He kisses Dean like he's drowning and his brother's the only source of air for miles, both hands fisted in Dean's shirt. Halfway through he loses the tenuous hold he had on everything and feels tears spill hot and fast down his face, and he can't bring himself to pull away long enough to wipe them away. It's Dean who pulls back, traces his thumb under Sam's eye, smearing the wetness there more than wiping it off.

"Dude, you're going to give me a complex about my technique, here."

That startles a laugh out of him, all mixed up with the sobs he's still trying to keep tamped down. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

"I thought you didn't want–"

"Yeah, well, when have you ever been right about anything I wanted?"

Sam scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve. "You know," he tries for normal, doesn't think he succeeds. "Kissing me in public isn't going to do anything for your claims that we're not gay."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, well, neither is you crying like a girl when I kiss you." He smooths Sam's hair away from his face. "We're not far from the car. What say we go get her, take a break for a little bit. That church is still going to be there later, and it's not like it's going to make a difference in the long run, if we take a couple of hours longer."

"No," he shakes his head. "We can… we can go now. We're going to get Cas back, and…"

Dean kisses him again. It's shorter this time, clearly designed to make him be quiet. "Okay, but we're getting the car first."

He nods, breathless. "Yeah, okay. Okay, Dean." Because right now Dean could ask him to swim across the Atlantic Ocean and he'd agree to it. He looks up over Dean's shoulder, catches sight of an older woman staring curiously at them.

When she notices him watching, she flushes a little and smiles. "_Vous êtes ben cute ensemble_," she says, as if that explains everything, and for all Sam knows, it does.

Dean leans back, grinning so wide it looks like his face might split open. "See, Sammy? I still got it in spades." He ruffles Sam's hair, and Sam lets him. "Okay, come on. Let's go find the car.

"We've got work to do."


End file.
